My weird ear for celebrity voices popped up again over the weekend, as I became
convinced the voice in the NFL's new TV promos is Forest Whitaker. A quick
Google suggested I was wrong, but I heard it a couple more times and did a
better search, and found out it is indeed his voice. The weird thing is that
before this if you asked me if I thought I knew what he sounded like I would
have answered probably not. Too bad there's not a way to capitalize on this odd
skill: Like Name that Tune for voices or something.

RollinThundr wrote on Aug 21, 2013, 13:41:Want to smoke? Pay triple for a single pack 95% of it taxes that go right to being spent wastefully.

Good. Smoking is dumb and they should tax the hell out of it since it has a significant health care cost to everyone else with no positive benefits for society. Smoking should be so expensive that people are forced to quit out of the common sense they apparently lack for engaging in the activity.

Fat people aren't costing the taxpayer a lot of health care money right now, smokers are.

But hey lets let the government regulate what we can and can't eat and ban things outright that are unhealthy.

The government regulates everything from pesticides to baby shampoo, stop being a drama queen. It even regulates food because otherwise that industry can't be trusted not to infect the populace with disease through lazy practices.

jdreyer wrote on Aug 20, 2013, 17:33:It's not *stopping* people from consuming that stuff that's necessary, but consuming less of it. Just like alcohol and tobacco, two products which were used much more frequently in the past before sin taxes and anti consumption campaigns were implemented. Bloomberg should never have tried to ban 32 oz Big Gulps, but instead put a dollar tax on them.

Agreed. Campaigns, education and taxes are the way to go with addressing it. Look at what it's done for smoking. It's becoming more and more marginalized through use of these techniques and it's to the benefit of society as a whole. The same things would probably work with weight related issues which are mostly food consumption problems due to a lack of education about food, cooking and so on.

Want to smoke? Pay triple for a single pack 95% of it taxes that go right to being spent wastefully. Now let's start banning food because it makes you too fat, oh and tax things based on calories! More calories higher taxes!

It's not a lack of education, people with half a brain should know that eating bad and not exercising is going to lead to health problems. Should be common sense no? No it's not a lack of education, people just don't care enough or are too lazy to workout, diet, etc.

But hey lets let the government regulate what we can and can't eat and ban things outright that are unhealthy.

jdreyer wrote on Aug 20, 2013, 17:33:It's not *stopping* people from consuming that stuff that's necessary, but consuming less of it. Just like alcohol and tobacco, two products which were used much more frequently in the past before sin taxes and anti consumption campaigns were implemented. Bloomberg should never have tried to ban 32 oz Big Gulps, but instead put a dollar tax on them.

Agreed. Campaigns, education and taxes are the way to go with addressing it. Look at what it's done for smoking. It's becoming more and more marginalized through use of these techniques and it's to the benefit of society as a whole. The same things would probably work with weight related issues which are mostly food consumption problems due to a lack of education about food, cooking and so on.

I don't disagree, but we can agree to start with the most awful, unnecessary items first, right? Chips, soda, candy, etc.

I don't think you can entirely get people to stop eating that.I'd rather do away with the sneaky unhealthy food than the blatantly unhealthy food.

It's not *stopping* people from consuming that stuff that's necessary, but consuming less of it. Just like alcohol and tobacco, two products which were used much more frequently in the past before sin taxes and anti consumption campaigns were implemented. Bloomberg should never have tried to ban 32 oz Big Gulps, but instead put a dollar tax on them.

Agent.X7 wrote on Aug 19, 2013, 16:46:Personally, I don't think we should do anymore than we already do to educate people about healthy eating. You get a good dose of that in school and on early education programs. We just need to make people who are too lazy to do anything about it pay more in medical costs.

I can see where you're coming from, but the poorest sector of the population is the most likely to be obese. They're already on Medicaid/Medicare. The system's already paying their costs. Educating these folks is cheaper than treating them later. It's also why NYC sponsors fresh fruit carts in poor neighborhoods like Harlem, where I live.

Actually, it's funny, two blocks away from my building there's a greasy dog/burger cart and a fresh fruit cart. Always a line at the former, never a soul at the latter. You can't even give the fruit away. And even the kids from the area that go to good schools and have fantastic grades still eat bad. They're educated in every other way but the diet is the last to sink in.

North American diets are crazy on carbs in general, people have become addicted to them. Almost every meal needs a carb side and worse, many main servings are basically a 70/20/10 carb/protein/veggie split. I'm not a big subscriber to those crazy low carb diets but there is such a thing as too much. It's not just a problem of how much people are eating in NA, it's about what they're eating too. It's no surprise people are packing in high GI foods and accumulating fat like crazy. People are very uneducated about healthy lifestyle and dieting in general despite having the internet at our fingertips due to lobby efforts, advertising and conflicting info.

The problem is that it's hard to break people of the bad habits, in many cases they've lived that way their entire lives. Little to no exercise, eating large portions of high GI foods with every meal, thinking that 70+g of carbs per serving is normal, etc. I don't really know how you solve that problem, its going to require generations of effort to undo much like smoking.

Agent.X7 wrote on Aug 19, 2013, 16:46:Personally, I don't think we should do anymore than we already do to educate people about healthy eating. You get a good dose of that in school and on early education programs. We just need to make people who are too lazy to do anything about it pay more in medical costs.

I can see where you're coming from, but the poorest sector of the population is the most likely to be obese. They're already on Medicaid/Medicare. The system's already paying their costs. Educating these folks is cheaper than treating them later. It's also why NYC sponsors fresh fruit carts in poor neighborhoods like Harlem, where I live.

Actually, it's funny, two blocks away from my building there's a greasy dog/burger cart and a fresh fruit cart. Always a line at the former, never a soul at the latter. You can't even give the fruit away. And even the kids from the area that go to good schools and have fantastic grades still eat bad. They're educated in every other way but the diet is the last to sink in.

Here's a simple truth that a couple of you are missing: THESE PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO BE EDUCATED. They just don't care. You could lecture them for an hour about HFCS and sugar and fruit, and then let them choose between 1/2 pound of deep fried Oreos and an apple and guess what they would choose? Sure, they don't want to be obese, but they also don't want to have to work at all to not be obese.

Certainly there's the issue that eating at McDonald's is a more efficient way to feed a family when money is an issue. That absolutely contributes to our obesity.

But, at the same time, even those with money are eating far too much sugar. It's in everything. Buy a loaf of bread? Sugar. Soup base? Sugar. Cereal? Sugar.

Not to mention all the other processed chemicals that made Walter Bishop go nuts in the supermarket.

Worse, all these sugary things are pushed as "healthy." People think they're eating a healthy breakfast of cereal with fiber, not realizing the fiber is all crap fiber and the cereal is loaded with sugar. And chemicals.

It's extremely hard to walk into any supermarket, even Whole Foods, and not walk out loaded with unhealthy processed commercialism.

jacobvandy wrote on Aug 19, 2013, 16:48:I'm talking about not being a fatass.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about too. Not having a BMI, for example, that puts you in the overweight or obese categories. And yes, BMI is not a perfect measurement, but it works for most people who aren't body builders or whatever.

The example of how much exercise is required to burn X amount of calories is somewhat misleading... You don't have to actively burn off everything you eat, including junk food, because you burn the vast majority of your average daily intake of calories just by being alive.

Right, I meant for example a candy bar IN ADDITION TO your normal intake. If you eat 2000 cals at your meals, and burn 2000 cals in your sedentary job, THEN you eat an extra candy bar, that's gonna be a 2.5 mile run to burn off.

But as far as preventing obesity, it is obscenely simple... I'd say a bigger problem, than something like poverty, is that people just don't take any pride in their appearance anymore. They just don't give a fuck. There is no shame in being a fat pig, because there are so many fat pigs out there that say it's okay, that nobody feels bad. Guess what piggy? You should feel bad! Jeebus.

Well, this is my exact point about how peers and culture affect us. And campaigns that stigmatized smoking and drunk driving have had a demonstrable effect on our culture. We could do the same for "food" like soda and chips that cause the bulk of that. We could restrict that kind of stuff to 18 and older like we do with alcohol and tobacco so habits don't form in childhood.

And in the past, I don't think people cared more about how they looked. First, more people got more exercise through necessity: there were more physical jobs, and transportation required you to walk more, not everyone had cars 50 years ago like they do today. Second, food is much, much cheaper today. The average household in 1960 spent twice as much on food as we do today. When stuff is cheaper, you consume more of it.

Agent.X7 wrote on Aug 19, 2013, 16:46:Personally, I don't think we should do anymore than we already do to educate people about healthy eating. You get a good dose of that in school and on early education programs. We just need to make people who are too lazy to do anything about it pay more in medical costs.

I can see where you're coming from, but the poorest sector of the population is the most likely to be obese. They're already on Medicaid/Medicare. The system's already paying their costs. Educating these folks is cheaper than treating them later. It's also why NYC sponsors fresh fruit carts in poor neighborhoods like Harlem, where I live.

Actually, it's funny, two blocks away from my building there's a greasy dog/burger cart and a fresh fruit cart. Always a line at the former, never a soul at the latter. You can't even give the fruit away. And even the kids from the area that go to good schools and have fantastic grades still eat bad. They're educated in every other way but the diet is the last to sink in.

Agent.X7 wrote on Aug 19, 2013, 15:50:My wife gets fatter every year because she refuses to get off her ass and work out. We eat the same food, but she eats a lot more of it. It's a pretty damn simple problem that people want to make complex to feel better about their own fat, lazy asses. It's the same reason everyone seems to have a "thyroid condition" now. Hey, fatty, that pie hole you keep jamming with food is not called a thyroid.

Hope she doesn't read that. If so, hope you have a comfortable couch to sleep on.